“You’re in the queue.” I don’t mind queues as long as there’s good food at the end of them. I once stood on the street in San Francisco for two hours on a sweltering summer’s day in order to get a seat at the counter of the 112-year-old Swan Oyster Depot. That icy-cold Anchor Steam and platter of steamed Dungeness crabs were worth it. Even the queue was fun, made up of people from all over the world.

In Bangkok, however, there are queues of up to seven hours for one particular street food stall, Raan Jay Fai, run by a tiny woman in her 70s. Seven hours in that heat, waiting for your crab omelette? Yikes.

What happens is that people with more money than time pay people with more time than money to queue for them, then slip in at the last minute and get their table.

It’s not my place to pass judgment if it’s part of the local gig economy, but that just doesn’t feel right.

Social media has magnified what used to be known as “word of mouth” (Raan Jay Fai has more than 200,000 followers on Instagram), and now the ratio of available seats to the number of people who want those seats is disproportionate.

Hence the need for restaurant reservation apps. Love them or hate them, it’s hard not to marvel at the ability to instantly see what tables are available when, where and for how many.

But haven’t we just swapped one queue for another? With the hottest restaurants opening their reservations three months in advance and booking out instantly, we’re all now in digital queues.

I’d been trying to get a table at The Chairman in Hong Kong for 15 years – a task made more difficult by the fact that I’m rarely in Hong Kong. After literally hours spent online and some desperate emails, however, the stars recently aligned. I floated through a banquet of pig trotter terrine, “flowery crab” steamed in fragrant chicken oil and aged Shaoxing wine, and sweet and sour pigs’ tails – and would go through it all again in a heartbeat.

But the last word on queues should go to Seinfeld’s Elaine. “It’s not fair that people are seated first come, first served,” she said to Jerry and George one day as they waited for a table. “It should be based on who’s hungriest.”

theemptyplate@goodweekend.com.au